I have a music library that expands at the rate of about one cd every month. I encode all of my music as FLAC files and then lock my little plastic discs away for safe keeping.

I had a Rockboxed iPod with a 60GB drive in it, but I have long since outgrown it. I could have expanded the Hard Drive, but I am looking for something with native FLAC support and better hardware.

I don't mind discontinued devices being listed, but I would like to see what is currently out there too. I'd say the player should provide a minimum of 3 hours of play time on a single charge, 8 would be 'cherry.'

I need to be able to put music on it with out proprietary transfer software.

The player will be plugged into a pair of ATH M50s and will be listened to by someone who puts his hands over his ears when a track from iTunes is played.

A good bonus would be support for 96khz/24bit files, but I'm not holding my breath.

Lastly, I'm looking at spending less than $200USD. If it is a little over budget and meet the aforementioned requirements perfectly, I'd still like to know about it.

What is the difference between native FLAC support and Rockbox FLAC support in your mind?

I can only speak for myself, but native support means you don't have to install 3rd party software such as Rockbox -- Some people like when things just work out of the box, no pun intended. In any case, I would encode my music into a natively supported format, and not the other way around... ie. trying to find a player which supports my favourite format.